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Harmattan

a travel blog by roel krabbendam

Harmattan: "A dry wind from the northeast or east that blows in West Africa especially from late November until mid-March. It originates in the Sahara as a desert wind and extends southward to about 5°N in January. It is associated with the high pressure area that lies over the northwest Sahara in winter."

Inspired by my michelin map of north africa, and (ahem) encouraged by my lovely spouse, i'm riding my bike (its a dutch thing) across the sahara desert between December 2006 and March 2007.
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Brothers

Ghardaia, Algeria


The M'zab Valley
I spent the day riding my bicycle all over the M’Zab valley, and then out of the valley to the desert above. The M’Zabites fled persecution to settle here in the cracks of the desert plain, creating a place so unique and consistent in its architecture that it is now protected by UNESCO. With Ghardaia at the center, the villages of Beni Isguem, Bounourra, Malika and El Latouf connect to fill the valley.

Futbal at Malika Haut cemetary

Soccer at Malika Haut cemetary

Wandering through Malika Haut late in the day, I was invited in for a cup of coffee by a guy walking home with an armful of baguettes. He led me into a garden where we sat on blankets and looked at his meticulously organized and labeled photo albums and goofed around with his four kids. “These albums”, he told me, “will be my cadeaux to my children one day, so that they understand a little of their parents and a little of their past”.


Ben Aoumeur Nadir enjoys disguises, and he shows me an astonishing array of portraits I would never have imagined were the same person. In one street shot, even a blind man with a cane turns out to be Nadir fooling around with his friends. These were his younger days, however.

Nadir has since become a focused, organized man. He told me he approaches each day with a precise plan, because without such a plan a man will fall into the void (“La Vide”). His words were spoken with some emotion, perhaps with the respect of someone who has once survived drowning in the ocean, and still now and then will stare out to sea.

He buys and sells dates, climbs and manages palm trees for others, manages a store now and then, and works on a municipal road construction crew at night. “This is what I must do to live, to stay strong, to be responsible to my family. As you can see, however, I still have plenty of time to be with my children”.

Nadir’s father kept four wives and produced twenty-nine children (For him, he says, one wife is as much as he can handle). Perhaps it shouldn’t surprise me so much then to return to Chez Said a few hours later, sit down to a late dinner with Ben Aoumeur Mohammed, and discover I had just had coffee with his half-brother 10 kilometers distant.

permalink written by  roel krabbendam on January 13, 2007 from Ghardaia, Algeria
from the travel blog: Harmattan
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Hope

Ghardaia, Algeria

I met Aliau Doiallo as he was working on a construction project in the palm grove where I am staying, and got the chance to hear his story over some olives and almonds and really strong mint tea.

Alieu Diallo
Aliau first left his home in Bamako, Mali at age 15, to find a job in Europe. He hitched 2200 kilometers east to Agadez, Niger, then 450 kilometers north through Arlit to the border with Algeria at I-n-Guezzam. An agreement between Mali and Algeria allowed him to enter Algeria legally. He continued to head north, through Tamanrasset, I-n-Salah, El-Miniaa, Ghardaia, Laghouat, Tiaret and Oran, arriving at the Morroccan border at Oujda after a 2400 kilometer haul across the Sahara. In Oujda he payed a Morroccan 2000 Algerian Dinar to smuggle him across the border into Morrocco. Finally, as he stole into the Spanish enclave of Melilla with 650 Benladeshi refugees, Spanish police nabbed the entire group. Aliau’s first attempt to reach Europe was over.

The Bengladeshi’s rioted in an effort to escape, and so all were handed over to the Morroccan police, bussed to Rabat, Morrocco and put on a plane back to Mali. Now, eight years later, Aliau is back in Ghardaia, Algeria working construction and odd jobs and considering his next move. The work here is diminishing. He questioned me intently about the United States, wanting to know where it was hot and cold, whether there were many foreigners there like himself, and where there was work. He wanted to know if I could send him a certificate de herbergement so that he could get a visa.


Alieu Diallo
I suggested that he find the Mali community overseas, because one man like myself could not hope to support him indefinitely while he accustomed himself to the USA, but a community might take him on. I'm not sure I convinced either of us, but I don't think that Aliau will give up: in his eyes and his eagerness, despite all of the obstacles he has endured or perhaps because of them, I saw someone with the dispassionate ability to assess a situation, the imagination to create a possibility, and the energy and animation of someone infused with and inspired by hope.

permalink written by  roel krabbendam on January 15, 2007 from Ghardaia, Algeria
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Party

Ghardaia, Algeria


Tower above Beni Isguen
Phone call from Wolf Gaudlitz: join him in Guerara tomorrow at Kherfi Ibrahim's for a party with the whole gang that got me into the country after a cold night stuck at the border.

Shadow at the gate to Beni Isguen
It's a 120km bike ride in the wrong direction, I'm hopelessly inept at parties, but I owe these guys a big thanks so, what the hell. I'll leave most of my stuff at Said's, leave early in the morning and travel light.

Minarets above Beni Isguen
It will be a good way to see just how much freedom of movement the police allow me on the main roads.

Street scene
I'll bike back to Said's the following day, and then head down to Tamanrasset. It's 19 hours by bus, and I think I'd rather do it in short hops, trying as much as possible to do it by bicycle. We'll see how things go tomorrow.

Street scene
Beth Cail out shopping

I asked Ibrahim Kherfi, whose wife maintains the religious dress code, if it doesn't get hot in there in the summer. He said "Probably".

permalink written by  roel krabbendam on January 15, 2007 from Ghardaia, Algeria
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Men With Guns

Guerara, Algeria

Over dinner with Said I casually mentioned my plan to bike to Guerrera, and he casually mentioned it to the local police, and they casually told him under no circumstances would I be allowed on the roads alone. No way. Had he not talked to the police I would have risked the trip by bicycle, but in the face of an explicit “no” I demurred.

I took a taxi. The 120 kilometers went quickly until 3 kilometers outside Guerrera when we were stopped at a roadblock, and I was summarily hauled into the headquarters of the Guardia Nationale for visa violations. It is true that my Algerian visa states that it expires on January 14.

I will plead, however, my admittedly suspect case. On January 12, I went to the Commissariat du Police in Ghardaia to arrange a visa extension. The police chief stated that the terms of the visa were such that entry into the country was required before the expiration date, but that the 30 day visa went into effect on the date of entry and could run past the date of expiration. I did not need an extension. He was wearing a uniform and sitting in an office responsible for visa extensions, so I believed him…sort of. I presented this point of view to the Guardia Nationale, however, and they kind of shrugged me off as an absolute idiot. I couldn’t really blame them.

I have been “detained” in Morocco, the United States and now Algeria, and though each case ended just fine, I can now say with authority that I much prefer Algeria. In Morocco I was held on a police boat in Casablanca harbor for 8 hours for illegally sneaking into Casablanca harbor late one night and asking fisherman if they would take me out fishing with them. The three policemen who questioned me all night finally laughed and called it a day at the end of their shift, and one of them ended up arranging that fishing trip for me and later taking me out on a date…don’t ask.

In the United States I was once stopped for speeding, and driving with an expired license, registration and inspection. I had obviously been rather inattentive, in large part due to an impending divorce, yet the $450 fine seemed excessive and the inflexibility of the officers involved made me feel inhuman. Luckily I could plead extenuating circumstances in court, and got off for $50 and the towing charge of $75.

In the case of the visa violation in Algeria, nine Men With Guns and Uniforms put me in a chair in the chief’s office and suggested I tell them my story. I did, and suggested they verify it by calling the Ghardaia police, which they did without getting an answer. I filled in all of my personal information on innumerable forms, provided consistent answers to all of their (somewhat sneaky) repeated questions, and behaved myself for the hour or so that I was held. After more phone calls, and arguments in Arabic, and a little bit of finger pointing at me, my new best friends suddenly all smiled and shrugged and told me without any explanation that I was free to go. We walked to the door, we shook hands all around, I was reminded that this had all been for my own protection, I told them sincerely that it had been no trouble at all and a pleasure to meet them at that, and then I asked for my passport back and hopped back in the taxi, and we took off with a last, fond farewell through the window. In the end, I suspect, it may have been the mention of who I was visiting that eliminated all obstacles: the well-known Kherfi freres.


permalink written by  roel krabbendam on January 17, 2007 from Guerara, Algeria
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Kherfi Freres

Guerara, Algeria


Kherfi Freres
The water lies just twenty or thirty meters under the sand, electricity is inexpensive, and the land: there is plenty of it. In fact, as long as you work it, it is free. So it is that the Kherfi brothers started a farm in 1988 and imported Holstein cows from the Netherlands in 1993, establishing a dairy operation in the middle of the Sahara.

Cows
Algeria imports most of its milk as powder, so the market for fresh milk products is potentially huge, and the government is interested in developing the agricultural sector, so they invested 1.5 million euro in the operation.

Kherfi Freres
The surreal and truly jarring experience of traveling 140 kilometers across a hot and uniformly sand colored desert plateau to find a perfectly flat, lusciously moist, and strikingly green grass Field is impossible to communicate. If you narrowed your Field of vision as you drove up the dirt road from the highway to the farm you would think you were in Holland. There are four of these Fields, each a perfect circle defined by the length of the irrigation equipment which endlessly travels around at a speed slower than walking. These Fields feed the animals.

Kherfi Freres
Kherfi Freres have:
800 hectares
4 irrigated Fields
4000 chickens
600 sheep
70 cows
8 camels
12 dogs
15 employees
2 large tractors
2 small tractors

Kherfi Freres
They produce dates, cereal, vegetables, and milk. Next year they will begin producing fresh yoghurt and cheese. The milk I drank copious quantities of was unpasteurized, unhomogenized, staggeringly rich in cream, and absolutely delicious. I couldn’t get enough of it. The cows need a little bit of extra care in the summer, insuring that they stay in the shade for example, but otherwise they appear perfectly content.

Ibrahim Kherfi
Ibrahim is in his thirties and runs the dairy operation. He studied in Paris, married a girl he has known since they were kids, and lives in a large house in Guerrera with his parents and his brother’s family. He showed me a plot of land where he hopes to soon start building his own house, giving he and his wife just a little bit more breathing room. Living with your parents apparently presents its challenges.

Nasser
Nasser is 54 years old and runs the rest of the farm. He struck me as a supremely competent guy, with a quiet sense of humor and a bad back. I saw him do everything from make sahara bread to fixing a tractor, and the employees obviously respect him immensely. He has four kids and has been married twenty-four years.

Irrigation at Kherfi Freres
We cooked some meat on an open fire and ate salad and bread and oranges and dates, and I spent the night in a dormitory of sorts before leaving the next day for the open desert.

permalink written by  roel krabbendam on January 18, 2007 from Guerara, Algeria
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La Source

Guerara, Algeria

After hours of seriously uncomfortable cross-country travel over a generally trackless waste in a truck with deflated tires, after endless discussions about where we are going and whether we will find it at all since we started too late and the sun has already set, after even a few rants about the lack of preparation by some and their lack of respect for the desert and the ease with which it can seriously ruin your day, we arrive finally at “La Source”.

La Source
60 years ago the French drilled for oil here, but found only water: scalding water at 60 degrees Celsius under tremendous pressure. The water has been flowing into the sand ever since, well known to the shepards and the animals and the citizens of Guerrera, but distant and difficult to access; our campsite for the next few days.

La Source
The miracle of finding flowing hot water (Life!) out in the middle of nowhere did not diminish the fact that this place is not pretty. The font itself is concrete and cast iron and rusty steel barrels. The sand is covered in dried sheep and camel dung.

Trash
The remains of campfires lie everywhere, and draped from the scattered thorny bushes blow purple and black and blue plastic grocery bags left to the wind. Toilet paper is everywhere. I had found finally a project with which to thank everyone for their endless hospitality and overwhelming generosity. I was going to clean this place up.
And I did, at least a good portion of it. The next day, while everyone was off looking for a very expensive radio that had been accidentally left out in the desert as we fumbled our way to our destination, I grabbed some plastic bags and spent 5 hours picking up every piece of plastic or rubber or paper I could find. I couldn’t bring myself to pick up toilet paper, so I buried that where I found it. By the time the crew got back without the radio, I had cleaned up 180 degrees of desert surrounding the well.

Wolf shaving at La Source
I saw new plastic bags in the bushes as we left 5 days later, so I won’t pretend to have precipitated a dramatic cultural shift. One night when one of the crew carelessly dumped some trash in the sand, however, I heard some gentle admonishment for his disregard of my efforts. Most of all I just felt relief that finally, after so many weeks from so many people of endless gifts and favors and acts of kindness, I could reciprocate in a small way to say “thank you”.

La Source

permalink written by  roel krabbendam on January 20, 2007 from Guerara, Algeria
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Movies

Guerara, Algeria

Wolf Gaudlitz is the German guy who got me into the country after that cold night at the border, and he is at “La Source” with his traveling picture show. So it is that one afternoon he mounts his very large movie screen to the side of his truck, hooks up his digital projector and amplifier and speakers, starts his generator, and to an audience of djellaba toting, mutton grilling, mint tea swilling locals (and one would-be bicycle rider), begins showing movies: Turkish movies in French with Arabic subtitles, music videos with no dialogue whatsoever, and at the climax, at the peak of the evening, after we have all been lying on the cold sand on thin blankets for hours and hours and the food is pretty much gone but we are all still huddled around the campfire and wide awake, “March of the Penguins” in German with French subtitles. I finally called it a night around three in the morning, but the film and the party was by no means over.

Movies
Wolf, I found out the next day, spent another two hours after the movie finally ended cleaning up the equipment for fear that the sand would ruin it, so he didn’t sleep at all.

Movies
When everyone else left a few days later, he suggested I play a part in his latest film. He has had some success with his movies on the art house scene and even has one of his films at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and I thought, “what the hell”. For two days I did take after take of walking around, improvising dialogue, saying the most inane things and probably making an absolute idiot of myself. I walked barefoot over rocks and sheep poop, froze for the early morning shots wearing only a pair of shorts, and cannot imagine how my part fits into the grander scheme. It’s coming soon to a theater near you.

permalink written by  roel krabbendam on January 21, 2007 from Guerara, Algeria
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Stories

Guerara, Algeria

Stories I heard late at night by the campfire:

Nasser was bitten by a snake while working at the farm last summer. He immediately sucked what he could out of the wound, applied a tourniquet to his arm, and was hauled off to Guerrera 30 kilometers away. There was no anti-venom available. As he felt the poison working its way up his arm towards his heart he was hauled to a hospital 120 kilometers away in Ghardaia. There, he spent four days in the hospital in a situation that might best be described as “tenuous”. He said: “it was important not to panic, because that only speeds your circulation”. He lived.

A young man from Guerara spent one holiday zipping around the desert on his motor bike without regard for the possible consequences. It so happened that the electricity went out that night in Guerrera due to some system failure, and so the glow of the town that serves as navigational beacon in the desert was lost. The young man guessed wrong about his directions, headed straight out into the desert instead of towards town, and ran out of gas without any idea about what had happened. It was mid-summer and he had no water and within two days he was dead, just a few kilometers it turns out from “La Source” and salvation.

One of the guys working on the farm was also bitten when he dared to have some fun with a snake he found at the farm. He panicked but had the good fortune to have anti-venom now at the farm, and so also survived. Death is usually a matter of less than an hour.

Snakes and scorpions are commonplace on the farm, but now, in the winter, they are all hibernating. In any case, it is only the snakes that are deadly. The scorpion bite is exceedingly painful, sometimes for days, but it will not kill a full-grown man. I found myself avoiding holes in the sand, covering my boots at night, and kicking rocks before picking them up.

Tourists are usually the protagonists in these death by desert stories, so it was refreshing (?) to hear the more local variations. In any case, staring around at the monochrome dust and remembering the level of tension as we tried to navigate to “La Source” at night, I’m left with a more than theoretical appreciation for the stakes and the consequences out here in the waste.


Nasser making sahara bread
Nasser making sahara bread and telling stories

permalink written by  roel krabbendam on January 22, 2007 from Guerara, Algeria
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Flies

Guerara, Algeria

If the laws of Dispersion are such that you find the highest concentration of something at its point of origin, then I know we have come very close indeed to the source of all flies. It is here in the desert south of Guerrera.

Flies on your lips
Flies in your clothes
Flies on your eyelids
And up your nose

The wax in your ears
The salt in your tears
The sweat on your brow
All fly chow now

Washing their hands
Rubbing their feet
Keeping an eye out
For fresh (white) meat

They swarm, they flurry
Fly clouds in a hurry
Quick to swoop down
On the poop you don’t bury

Cockroaches may be here
Long after man dies
But I’ll put my money
On the survival of flies

Someone call Darwin or Leakey or Goodall: I’m sure it all started here, the origin of the species.


permalink written by  roel krabbendam on January 22, 2007 from Guerara, Algeria
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Fire

Ghardaia, Algeria

Wolf and I packed up and got ready to leave before the day advanced much so to avoid traveling at night. He turned the ignition key, sent power to the starter motor, applied some pressure to the gas pedal and then looked at me with a slight frown.

Wolf after the fire
He asked, “What is that strange noise”? We listened, and then smelled something burning. Smoke suddenly billowed black and flames shot out of the underside of the cab. We bailed, Wolf leaping out with a fire extinguisher, and within seconds the fire was out. That’s all it took: a few seconds. The truck was stuck. We were 50 kilometers from town.

Truck fire
On my satellite phone we called for help from Guerrera. Just before nightfall, Nasser and Ibrahim and three mechanics from town arrived to pull the damaged parts from the truck, and we decided I would accompany them back to town to assist in finding a replacement. We left after dark, leaving Wolf alone with the truck. Our vehicle did not have four-wheel drive and so we were not in a position to take off cross-country: we had to find and stay on the main “piste” back to town. We lost that piste.

Truck fire
Remember that drive out to “La Source”? The indecision, the arguments, the confusion? Reverse the intended direction, add more Very Opinionated Men, remove every conceivable landmark except the moon and what may or may not be the faint glow of the town (they call that a beacon????), add dirt tracks going in every conceivable direction, and in the back of your mind remember that story of the guy and his motorcycle dying out in the desert after running out of gas: at that point you are ready to imagine the level of concern and….um….discussion in the car when the driver made it clear from his erratic decisions that he hadn’t a clue about where we were or where to go.

All I could remember from my nights out in the tent was that the moon was setting lately in the west and that the town was north. We had to keep the moon to our left. That would have been fine but we had to find the piste, and that in the end took us hours. Even when we found something that looked like it headed in the right direction, we were forced to rely on the moon to keep us oriented; the number of possible tracks to follow and the number of times a track simply disappeared was truly disorienting. It was with tremendous good fortune that the moon didn’t set until just before we hit the highway, that the tire didn’t go flat until just before town, and that we had a full tank of gas to get us back. This is not an experience I care to repeat, ever.

I am back in Ghardaia now, and should be heading south shortly. After twenty eight years of simply imagining it, I’m going to see Tamanrasset. Happy Birthday, Mia. I love you.


permalink written by  roel krabbendam on January 23, 2007 from Ghardaia, Algeria
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7 Trips
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Here's a synopsis of my trips to date (click on the trip names to the right to get all the postings in order):

Harmattan: Planned as a bicycle trip through the Sahara Desert, from Tunis, Tunisia to Cotonou, Benin, things didn't work out quite as expected.

Himalayas: No trip at all, just...

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